MAINSTREAM LOUDOUN and other concerned citizens from Loudoun County, citing broad abuses of library users' rights, today are filing a legal motion asking the U.S. District Court in Alexandria to order the Loudoun County Library Board to abandon its Internet censorship policy. A hearing on this motion is scheduled for September 25.

The Loudoun residents and their lawyers from the Washington, DC, law firm of Hogan and Hartson L.L.P. and People For the American Way Foundation argue that the library's policy so blatantly violates the First Amendment that it should be immediately struck down as unconstitutional without a trial.

In the motion for summary judgment being filed today, plaintiffs in the case, Mainstream Loudoun et al. V. Board of Trustees of the Loudoun County Library, cited new evidence uncovered during the discovery process showing that the censorship policy is riding roughshod over the rights of Loudoun County library patrons. The motion argues that the Loudoun County Internet policy violates Loudoun county citizens' constitutional rights in several ways. It imposes prior restraint on Internet information, reduces adult access to information to less than what is fit for children, imposes broad and vague restrictions on speech, vests library staff with unbridled discretion to enforce the policy, and fails to serve a compelling government interest by the least restrictive means.

The Library Board's requirement of filtering software on all computers for all patrons denies access to a vast array of completely constitutionally protected information on the Internet. In the library's own test of the X-Stop software last fall, they found that 67% of the web sites that were blocked contained no material that should have been blocked under their own policy. Indeed, the Internet policy is so restrictive it goes against the Library Board's own previously established policies on Freedom for Ideas--Freedom from Censorship, Collection Development, and Confidentiality.

"Unlike Justice Potter Stewart, who said he could not intelligibly define obscenity but that 'I know it when I see it,' the Board of Trustees of the Loudoun County Public Library claims it knows what is obscene without even having to look at it," the motion states.